Seeds and Cuttings

Quotes for Those that Love Gardens, Gardening and the Green Way

Compiled by Karen and Mike Garofalo

"Whether you tend a garden or not, you
are the gardener of your own being,
the seed of your destiny."
- The Findhorn Community

"The love of gardening is a seed that once
sown never dies."
- Gertrude Jekyll

"Though I do not believe that a plant
will spring up where no seed has
been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed
there, and I am prepared to expect wonders."
- Henry David Thoreau

"Only God can make a tree, but I'm in
charge of seeds and weeds!"
- Author Unknown

"Find the seed at the bottom of your
heart and bring forth a flower."
- Shigenori Kameoka

Happiness held is the seed;
Happiness
shared is the flower.

"O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth."
- John Davies, 1570-1626, Ode to the West Wind.

"I don't
believe the half I hear,
Nor the quarter of what I see!
But I have one faith, sublime and true,
That nothing can shake or slay;
Each spring I firmly believe anew
All the seed catalogues say!"
- Carolyn Wells

"The anthropologists are busy, indeed,
and ready to transport
us back into the savage forest where all human things have
their beginnings; but the seed never explains the flower."
- Edith Hamilton

"I can hear, underground, that sucking and sobbing,
In my veins, in my bones I feel it,--
The small water seeping upward,
The tight grains parting at last.
When sprouts break out,
Slippery as fish,
I quail, lean to beginnings, sheath-wet."
- Theodore Roethke, Cuttings

"The seed has no idea
of being some particular plant, but it has
its own form and is in perfect harmony with the ground, with its surroundings ... and there is no trouble. This is what we
mean by naturalness."
- Shrunyu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

"Two years ago, I was saying as I
planted seeds in the garden,
"I must believe in these seeds, that they fall into the earth and
grow into flowers and radishes and beans." It is a miracle to
me because I do not understand it. The very fact that they use
glib technical phrases does not make it any less a miracle, and
a miracle we all accept. Then why not accept God's miracles?"
- Dorothy Day, From Union Square to Rome, 1938

"I once found a kernel of corn in the
middle of a deep wood
by Walden, tucked in behind a lichen on a pine, about as high
as my head, either by a crow or a squirrel. It was a mile
at least from any corn-field.
- Henry D. Thoreau, Journal, November 19, 1850"

"I ask not for a larger garden,
but for finer seeds."
- Russell H.Conwell

"There is a way to see
inside
By looking directly through
to seed or marrow

Within the bone vessel
a world is made
Red and milkweed
it flows between us like
wind

Within the seed's case
a secret is held
Its fertile whisper
shapes a song"
- Joan Halifax,
Marrow

"The seeds of the day are best planted
in the first hour."
- Dutch Proverb

"Think of the fierce energy
concentrated in an acorn! You bury it in the ground, and it explodes into an oak!
Bury a sheep, and nothing happens but decay."
- George Bernard Shaw

"Now seeds are just dimes to the man in the
store
And the dimes are the things that he needs,
And I've been to buy them in seasons before
But have thought of them merely as seeds;
But it flashed through my mind as I took them this time,
"You purchased a miracle here for a dime."
- Edgar A. Guest, A Package of Seeds

"He places a seed in the dust for the
reason
That it may in the day of distress, give fruit."
- Sadi

"Poetry is like a free bird that knows
no boundary, like seeds
that are carried along by the wind, that grow, bloom and bear
fruit where they find good soil without
asking anyone's permission."
- Ion Codrescu

Think small. Planting tiny
seeds in the small space given you
can change the whole world or, at the very least, your view of it.
- Linus Mundy

"But the sower
going forth to sow sets foot
into time to come, the seeds falling
on his own place. He has prepared a way
for his life to come to him, if it will. Like a tree, he has given roots
to the earth, and stands free."
- Wendell Berry, The Seeds, 1970

"Ideas are like seeds, few ever grow
up to be something.
Promises of fruit being "Sweet" and
"Juicy" will sell seeds, and much much more."
- Michael Garofalo, Pulling
Onions

"Of all the wonderful things in the wonderful
universe of God,
nothing seems to me more surprising that the planting of a seed
in the blank earth and the result thereof. Take that Poppy seed,
for instance: it lies in your palm, the merest atom of matter, hardly
visible, a speck, a pin's point in bulk, but within it is imprisoned a
spirit of beauty ineffable, which will break its bonds and emerge
from the dark ground and blossom in a splendor so dazzling
as to baffle all powers of description."
- Celia Thaxter

"When I see that first, minuscule,
curled, pale green wisp
of a sprout poking up between a couple of grains of
vermiculite, I hear God speaking."- June Santon, "Miracle in a Dixie Cup," Greenprints

"Of all created things the source is
one,
Simple, single as love; remember
The cell and seed of life, the sphere
That is, of child, white bird, and small blue dragon-fly
Green fern, and the gold four-petalled tormentilla
The ultimate memory.
Each latent cell puts out a future,
Unfolds its differing complexity
As a tree puts forth leaves, and spins a fate
Fern-traced, bird feathered, or fish-scaled."
- Kathleen Raine, Message From Home

"Why does it take 1 million sperm to
fertilize one egg?
They won't stop to ask for directions."

"As with all new
science, genetic manipulation of seed DNA has possibilities for good and for evil. It depends on how it's used and who controls it.
- Ruth S. Foster

"But why should not the New Englander
try new
adventures - not lay so much stress on his grain,
his potato and grass crop, and his orchards - and
raise other crops than these? Why concern
ourselves so much about our beans for seed,
and not be concerned at all about
a new generation of men."
- Henry David Thoreau

"If seeds in the black earth can turn
into such beautiful roses,
what might not the heart of man become in its long
journey toward the stars?"
- G.K. Chesterton

"He who plants a seed,
Beneath the sod;
And waits to see -
Believes in God."
- Author Unknown

"All seed answer light, but the color is
different.
The plant reveals what is in the seed."
- Ancient Egyptian Proverbs

"Give men new seeds and they will eat
now and plant for the
future; give them a religion, and they will starve to
death praying to Father Nature for seeds."
- Michael P. Garofalo

"This very act of planting a seed in
the earth
has in it to me something beautiful. I always do it
with a joy that is largely mixed with awe."
- Celia Thaxter

The Spirit of Gardening
Website
Over 3,800 Quotations, Poems, Sayings, Quips, One-Liners, Clichés, Quotes, and
Insights
Arranged by Over 250 Topics
Over 15 Megabytes of Text
Over 21 Million Webpages (excluding graphics) Served to Readers Around the World
From January 1, 1999 through March 1, 2011
This webpage has been online since January 1999
Compiled by Karen Garofalo
and Mike Garofalo from Red
Bluff, CaliforniaE-Mail

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